The organizational features you mention in the "new" finder are not nearly as important as stability and speed.

I am hoping that the new Finder is FULLY multi-threaded and doesn't freeze as often as the 10.2x Finder. The spinning beach ball should not be a familiar sight in a Unix-based OS. Rarely does a week go by where I do not have to relaunch the Finder.

As far as speed is concerned, viewing a directory with more than 400 files incurs delays that don't exist in Windows OS's. Listing more than 500 files can be painful. It is time that Apple figures out how to accelerate (or bypass) the handling of HFS+ metadata and file resources. Users who strictly identify file types with suffix useage should not have to suffer performance penalties.

These drawbacks of the current Finder remind me of why (in part) IRIX users ignore the IRIX GUI in favor of the command line. I am hoping that Apple has addressed these issues so more advanced users can rely on, and not be hampered by, the GUI as well.